There is an interesting evolution taking place in the traditional hosting space. Cloud computing is being steadily extended. People are rethinking the data center and this exciting process opens up an eclectic variety of new modifications to the traditional server in order to serve the customers better.

Virtualizing the server is one such modification available in the market today. The act of virtualizing a server in computing refers to creating a virtual rather than an actual version of something. This includes but is not restricted to a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources. Cloud computing is the technique that after virtualization has taken place provides resources from various separated computers on-demand.

The environment used to virtualize the server is Hypervisor. Hypervisor helps to create several virtual machines (VM) that have an independent CPU, Memory and Network and individual Operating Systems.

Cloud providers such as Cirrus Tech are getting really interested in Docker Container technology within a Virtual Machine. Docker is an Open platform for developers and system administrators to build and test cloud applications. Docker is fast becoming a very convenient way for building, running and shipping distributed applications. Docker, which is operated as an application (service), is a Virtualization platform that can build and package a number of applications and make them highly portable.

Docker helps to manage a computer environment separated from an OS by using the Libcontainer, which is a Linux container system. This Container technology is more than a decade old already. Google has been using in-house versions of containers for many years. But Docker container has now made the tools easy enough for everyone else to use too.

Thanks to Docker, users can now create a network and attach containers to it. They can communicate seamlessly across a cluster of containers with a single command. Basically a container summarizes applications and defines their interface to the surrounding system, which should make it simpler to drop applications into VMs running Docker in different clouds.

With Docker developers and system managers can distribute and test the software that they have developed, more easily and faster, move it from a laptop environment to any geographical location or any system that is supported by Docker or vice versa.

By using Docker containers, resources can be isolated, processes provisioned and services restricted to have an almost completely private view of the operating system with their own process ID space, file system structure, and network interfaces. Multiple Docker containers share the same kernel, but each container can be constrained to only use a defined amount of resources such as CPU, memory and I/O.

Docker Hub: A cloud service for sharing applications and automating workflows.

These two work together and the developer utilizes these two to implement their technology to make their testing or developing cycles quicker and easier.

Benefits of using Docker in a Virtual Machine

1) Having a Docker container in a VM is easy to manage and applies the policy of system, network, user and security. With Docker, there is no need to install an extra OS as Docker container has everything it needs to operate.

2) In a Docker container, you can run multiple Docker instances in a single VM or per physical node and so this is far more economical for developers.

3) Having a Containerized version of a VM makes it easier to maintain and to port to new cloud environments. Containers are isolated and share an OS and can also share bins/libraries when required.

Giant tech companies are rushing to deploy this Docker technology, which represents one of the biggest shifts in application development in years. Mostly all activity online now is an application running in the cloud. Apps housed in Docker’s free container software have been downloaded 535 million times in just two years.

Many large businesses are planning to adopt Docker faster than any cloud open-source product ever according to a study by New York based market research firm, Enterprise Technology research.

Docker is completely open-source and easily accessible. Therefore, it is being consumed heavily in the market by the non-procrastinating developers.

Cirrus is now offering the SmarterTools product line including the SmarterMail (14 X) which is a leading webmail server, SmarterTrack customer service software and SmarterStats web log analytics and SEO software to its VPS hosting customers. These applications offer rich tools to improve email infrastructure, help desk set-up and website analytics statistics.

SmarterMail is a more cost-effective alternative to Microsoft Exchange without sacrificing functionality or usability and has customers in over 120 international locations. SmarterMail contains simple language strings to make it easier for automated translations and for customers who create their own translation files. SmarterTrack is a help desk application with an array of robust features made for tracking, managing and reporting on customer service and communications, including sales and support issues. The SmarterStats web log analytics and SEO platform allows users to monitor statistics in a single application and provides relevant and detailed website statistics to help businesses increase conversions and maximize ROI.

Customers hosted with Cirrus can now deploy the SmarterTools suite of products on their Virtual Private Server (VPS) plans. Hosting on Virtual Private Servers with Cirrus, offers users the SmarterTools suite at no additional charge. This makes Cirrus VPS hosting packages ideal for small to medium sized businesses looking for a scalable, redundant and customizable set-up that also provides applications and software options to improve overall business operations.

What SmarterMail provides:

Exchange-level Mail Server Software

Lower Hardware requirements.

Superior Stability.

Reduced maintenance costs.

The features of SmarterMail include a rich Webmail interface, file storage, detailed reporting, email archiving, advanced synchronization, out-of-the-box antispam and antivirus amongst many other options. SmarterTools products are used by businesses in over 100 countries worldwide.

The tools have been tested and optimized for most of the popular web browsers including Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera, allowing end users to access their business software from any device, from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

Integration and 24/7 Security with SmarterMail

Easily migrate from any mail service (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc.).

Provides searchable message archiving and system level for inbound and outbound email and chat.

Create virtually any kind of messaging, add formatting to highlight important pieces of information in tasks, notes and more.

With no additional cost, SmarterMail includes vigorous internal antispam and antivirus features. This achieves 97% spam protection upon setup and installation. SmarterMail also includes a variety of intrusion detection methods to prevent the mail server from being compromised. Customers can also tie in external third party antispam services and devices quickly for an additional layer of security if customers want.

About SmarterTools
Founded in 2003, SmarterTools Inc. is an information technology management software company based in Phoenix, Arizona. SmarterTools builds a Windows mail server, customer service software, and Web log analytics and SEO software that simplify and automate the day-to-day IT operations of businesses and hosting environments in over 100 countries. Additional information about SmarterTools Inc. and the SmarterTools product line is available at the company website: www.smartertools.com

About Cirrus Hosting

Cirrus Tech Ltd. has been a leader in providing affordable and dependable VPS since 1999. They have hosted and supported hundreds of thousands of websites and applications for Canadian businesses and clients around the world. As a BBB member with an A+ rating, Cirrus Hosting is a top-notch Canadian web hosting company with professional support, rigorous reliability and easily upgradable VPS solutions that grow right alongside your business. Their Canadian data center is at 151 Front Street in Toronto.

Toronto, Ontario, May 7th 2015-Cirrus Tech Ltd, an award winning Toronto based cloud hosting company is thrilled to announce the latest partnership with OnApp. This collaboration allows Cirrus Tech, known as a Canadian Cloud provider to be able to deploy global infrastructure. Especially enhancing operations in North America with the expansion of OnApp’s key feature: OnApp Federation. If customers deploy services with Cirrus Tech, they will be able to access 170+ locations while only having to deal with one company, one support and one agreement. With this Cloud Federation feature, Cirrus can even provide different SLAs specified to individual customer needs.

Cirrus Tech while wanting to keep up with its growing global customer demands has chosen OnApp Federation to be their source for their global reach. And so to compete with the world’s largest clouds, Cirrus Tech has now the ability to host applications and content wherever their customer requires.This allows for an easy way to control exactly where the data is hosted while complying with varied regional data protection laws. OnApp Federation helps the customers reach globally without having to invest in infrastructure, giving them access to large amounts of compute and content delivery capacity. This incredible feature called OnApp Federation, gives the customers the ability to mix and match many different kinds of cloud capacity.

Cloud Federation is a dynamic Cloud infrastructure under one umbrella: Mix cloud, dedicated servers, CDN, storage and disaster recovery. The Federation supports private locations too, and grants the power to restrict access to specific service providers if customers choose to, giving them a simpler way to resell their cloud services globally. Furthermore, customers can create private federations across multiple clouds.

The Federation helps customers choose locations with renewable energy and helps them launch green cloud hosting services. This infrastructure is simple to manage. Ratings are based on storage performance, hardware specs, bandwidth and uptime.

Highly scalable, the platform has an intelligent provisioning system that optimizes the way hardware resources are used. An efficient network design that enables the cloud to scale easily as customers’ business grows.

Cirrus cloud service, is a complete Infrastructure-as-a-Service which enables its customers to offer cloud services with virtually no downtime and with unlimited capacity and that is geo-redundant.

About OnApp

OnApp was founded in 2010. They have now more than 140 staff across offices in the US, UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The HQ is in London, UK. OnApp provides Infrastructure-as-a-service software for hosts, telcos and MSPs. Their software is used by more than 3,000 service providers in 93 countries. An estimated 1 in 3 public clouds now run on OnApp, operating in 170+ locations in 113 cities across 43 countries now.

About Cirrus Hosting

Cirrus Tech Ltd. has been a leader in providing affordable and reliable, cloud infrastructure and website hosting since 1999. Cirrus has hosted and supported hundreds of thousands of websites and applications for Canadian businesses and clients around the world. As a BBB member with an A+ rating, Cirrus Hosting is a top-notch Canadian cloud hosting company with professional support, rigorous reliability and easily scalable cloud solutions that grow right alongside customer needs.

All company names and products mentioned in this release are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Cloud Computing, a term being widely used and recently being adopted in our daily business communications, is no more than the practice of using a series of network of remote servers across the internet. These servers are specially hosted to store, manage and process data rather than using your local server or a personal computer. Cloud provides the customer’s data with features such as scalability, security, elasticity and redundancy. The term “Cloud computing” evolved in the late 2000’s based on its functionality and adaptation in computing resources.

Cloud computing can be broadly divided into three main categories:

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Many IT leaders are looking at the Cloud to provide them with the much needed agility for their business practices. Businesses should not have to have their attention on managing and continuously securing their data but rather having their attention on business innovation. Slowly run applications will tend to lower user productivity which of course would have an impact on revenue.

How applications run while on local premises is entirely different than how it may run in the Cloud. Keeping abreast with daily growing demands of any business – only one that is able to adapt easily and adjust will have long term success be it in the local or global market.

Firstly businesses should understand how the infrastructure is performing before they migrate to the Cloud and then test how they perform after this move. This is critical to understanding how to optimize and evaluate the impact on the end user. Another crucial component is to understand what parts of the infrastructure are causing the system to perform badly. In today’s world, IT departments are far more transparent and business users, more educated about IT. Companies now can easily source their IT from external providers in the Cloud, if they are not satisfied with the company’s internal IT department. This in turn creates a more service-driven culture that creates higher level of customer satisfaction due to competition and niche specific features.

Furthermore, today’s businesses are seldom localized and so global reach is critical for most service providers. Content and applications no longer remain native and need to be easily and readily available globally wherever the demand may come from.

The OnApp Federation is one such feature which allows a large amount of infrastructure to be used to extend your Cloud and CDN services, without having to build your very own global network. Cloud Federation, is going to be the next generation of CDN. This primarily means that customers can run dynamic websites on multiple locations/servers vs. only caching static pages and content. Customers would enjoy unlimited capacity in running their websites-whether that capacity is required seasonally or permanently. One of the best features is that the ownership of data will never be limited to one company and there are choices of different managed SLA’s to choose from. Data becomes an easy access to Cloud and CDN instances from around the world from a single dashboard-in actual time.

With 170+ locations in 113 cities across 43 countries, available on demand, you can create services that are as global and diverse, or as local and specified to individual want. Cloud Federation is a dynamic Cloud infrastructure under one umbrella: Mix cloud, dedicated servers, CDN, storage, disaster recovery and geared towards individual requirements.

The crux of this is really an online market that permits 900 of OnApp’s service provider customers to rent infrastructure from each other. This allows OnApp to offer a global reach to customers who need it without having to surrender control of their customers to providers in other geographical locations. The customer only gets a single view or face end of the service. For them, it appears that their service provider is global, leaving them just dealing with one point of contact and one bill to pay at the end of the day.

Cloud Federation helps customers engage and enter new global markets after mastering their own local market expertise. It helps in generating new revenue streams helping you to flexibly expand the business.

Benefits of Cloud Federation

Dealing with a single company

Unlimited capacity expansion

No downtime

This is a very exciting time for Cloud hosting and it’s meticulous reconstructions are worth keeping an eye out for. Before you know it- your business model might get too old, too soon!

In 2014, businesses had begun to really grasp the IT Enterprise and fully comprehend Cloud Technology and its practices. The Cloud in return adjusted more of its core features and incorporated traditional needs for this Enterprise called IT. Weather it is for native Cloud Web-scale applications or for businesses of varied sizes, the Cloud is gaining its respect to be one of modern days best practices to increase efficiency as well as flexibility in any digital savvy business environment.

However, it is also estimated that the companies that do choose to adapt Cloud this year- about 25% percent of them would be investing in Cloud for the very first time. A lot of the companies across the world are being driven back to private cloud after the initial thrill into public and hybrid models, mainly due to the increasing security concerns.

In 2015 Gartner surveyed more than 2,800 IT leaders globally and found that a majority of CIO’s both in Canada and across the world had a concern about the increasing risks around securing data being created in the digital world in business practices. Apparently the Canadian CIO is said to be more focused on legacy modernization, application development and IT services, compared to other global business environments. And here then lies further credit due to the Canadian CIO for being experimental and brave despite his far greater fear than its global counterparts regarding digital risks. It has been surveyed that the Canadian CIO’s (92%) as compared to Global CIO’s (83%) are far more concerned regarding the ability to deal with these risks from a management perspective.

Both Canadian and other Global CIO’s are following almost the same patterns with only a slight variation when it comes to adapting Cloud options for Software and Infrastructure. Virtualization has increased efficiency and flexibility on the server side of computing. However, the storage side of it has remained mostly unchanged.

Canada in 2014 however, has not had a large number of breaches reported in comparison to other parts of the world especially the US.

Canadians attitude towards data privacy:

78% – Have become reluctant to share personal information with businesses.

1 out of 3- Have been fully satisfied with a companies’ privacy policy before starting a business with them.

81%- Have expressed that the business they do with a company, depends on the companies’ public reputation around privacy.

It has been found that Cyber attackers can have unconstrained access in a victims systems for a median of 205 days before they are exposed and some breaches on the other hand can go undetected for even years, says a new report from FireEye. Apparently very few businesses can even detect a breech on their own. In 2014 it was estimated that around 69% of a company’s breach was found out by a third party.

Security with Cirrus Tech. Ltd.

Cirrus has been actively adopting measures for Cloud Security, throughout its business years in Cloud Hosting. Cirrus, not only adopted industry standard practices but has also after about 16 years of working within the industry and being deeply engaged with actual early on adopters of Cloud, has managed to reached some novel methodologies developed by its internal engineers.

The network layer of the infrastructure is powerfully protected not only for DDOS, data breaches and any sort of malicious attacks but is actively monitored by some of the very best threat management applications such as ThreatStop, Brocade firewalls, etc ….

VLANs or Virtual Private Networking option on Cirrus cloud hosting offering, adds another layer of security into the company’s offering, creating network isolation & separation. This helps to prevent any source of network data sniffing. Cirrus also has adopted Starwind one of the greatest industry storage platforms and created a unique data “block storage” layer in its cloud infrastructure with absolute data isolation amongst cloud clients that may be sharing some of this physical computing or storage layer.

All the customer relationships, from sales to support related issues are also entirely logged and performed through PCI compliant platforms and some very rigorous audits for potential points of breaches that may have been overseen.

There is no black and white around Cloud security just yet-however some companies and governments are far more committed to customer security and data management than others. As more and more hackers succeed to get their cheap thrills by breaking through the code- there will always be systems in check to ensure other peoples data privacy, remains sacred.

The advent of IT innovation began more than half a century ago. Leading us now at a point where we have web scale computing, lightning fast processor speed and at a junction of cloud computing, to manage all of our IT requirements. As with most large scale operations, the technology sector too has not only become faster but also cheaper with time. If our predecessors were fortunate enough in the 60’s to have technology, they would be paying around $1000 per MB of storage. Today, a terabyte of storage is almost equivalent to the cost of our toothpaste consumption in a month.

During the 60’s era, computing was mainly used for modeling, forecasting and simulations for scientific research and government programs like NASA. Today’s technology consumption and utility have increased leaps and bounds , due to the low cost computers and storage devices, high- capacity networks as well as widespread adaptation of service-oriented culture and hardware virtualization. We are compelled to increasingly contemplate about cloud computing.

Some businesses however, are still resisting the transition from dedicated servers to a cloud environment. In the mid 1990’s when cloud hosting was picking up as an option for business practice, it took a while for internal systems to catch up to the capabilities of expanding. However, creating a hybrid platform these days is easier than ever.

Cloud VPS or VM hosting is just one of many types of hosting options available in the market today. Essentially, a VPS is a virtual server that offers many if not more advantages then a dedicated server. VPS is a shared server but it makes sure that with partitions in the VPS the user’s information remains highly confidential and secure by allocating separate nodes to each business client. Trustworthy web host providers like CirrusHosting.com also allocate plenty of VPS server resources to responsibly avoid server downtime.

One of the hurdles that companies come up against in migrating from dedicated servers to cloud VPS is that some companies use programs that are designed to work with legacy infrastructure or have not been updated in a long time.

It is seldom that businesses jump off the rut of daily business practices and ask themselves, if there is a more efficient way of testing, deploying or even developing our business applications. Or are just looking for some extra infrastructure that readily scales whenever one would require it to.

Innovation is the buzz word for today’s businesses and that requires agility. If it typically takes your business a while to accommodate new technology and with even greater struggle to disseminate that internally, then you probably want to consider significant restructuring. Cloud computing helps with that struggle as it permits companies to have their applications up and running faster, have lesser maintenance costs, better manageability and allows IT to keep abreast with the rapidly fluctuating and unpredictable business demands.

Cloud also helps in maximizing the use of computing power thus reducing environmental damage as well since less power, air conditioning, rack space, etc. are required for a variety of functions. With cloud computing, multiple users can access a single server to retrieve and update their data without purchasing licenses for different applications.

A service provider like CirrusHosting.com takes over most of the management, including security, memory, storage, IT support and even helps in the virtualization.

Customers consistently want to connect their services together more easily. That is the power of cloud; it eases the average business of having to constantly worry about infrastructure maintenance and management.

Virtual Private Servers VS Dedicated servers

Same Security

Flexibility

Same Performance

Better Scalability

Migration to New Hardware

Better Redundancy

Easier Upgrade Paths

Apparently Cloud computing is going to reach a record high in 2015, it is time for businesses to make hay while the sun shines. Meaning it is time for businesses to lay the foundations that will help keep their business up and running for many years to come. It is either that or wait for the inevitable failure of important systems/hardware which of course in the long run, cost far more damage to the business than switching to cloud now.

Migration to Cloud doesn’t have to be a daunting task. It is simply one that is highly recommended for businesses today. It is an incredibly powerful service- whose time has come.

March 2015, Cirrus Tech Ltd, a Toronto, Ontario based company specializing in private and public cloud hosting have chosen OnApp as its technology provider for its cloud VM offerings –formally known as VPS.

This collaboration between Cirrus Tech and OnApp software transforms Cirrus VM offering into a flexible, scalable and highly automated platform.

This new product (Cirrus Cloud VM 1.0) has been intentionally numbered, as Cirrus intends to routinely release new packages with significantly, updated specs and features in each iteration.

The entry package with Single Core 2.0 Ghz CPU, 2 GB of RAM and 50 GB Disk space – starts at $39.99 per month and it would be $23.99 on a 3-year term sign-up.

Extreme Scalability: In addition, have the ability to build from a relatively small VM and expand to a full blown private cloud with private disks, private networks and private severs referred to as “Smart servers” on the OnApp platform. This would allow customers to host their cloud based applications with peace of mind. Not having to worry about designing and investing too much in infrastructure. This would also allow for significant growth and expand to virtually unlimited capacity with no interruptions in the service.

Hourly Billing: Furthermore, our customers will have the flexibility of paying per hour, for their individual website’s workload. This gives the customer a wide range of billing models such as seasonal billing.

Cirrus Tech’s preexisting cloud features include:

Hardware redundancy (live migration)

Redundant storage

Quick provisioning

Console access

Recovery mode (to access file system when OS is not functional)

Cloning

Image backup included

Cloud based DNS included

Hundreds of templates to choose from

Upgrade resources without reboot for some major operating systems such as CentOS

Virtual firewall (Firewall outside of the virtual environment)

VM segregation (in case of customer having multiple VMs)

Guaranteed and Dedicated resources

Intelligent Auto-scaling

Load Balancers

CDN

“More and more businesses are sourcing cloud infrastructure from local providers who can offer a close-touch service with excellent local country support – providers just like Cirrus. Running on the OnApp cloud platform, Cirrus can deliver a great cloud feature set, from traditional VPS through to enterprise hybrid cloud, with a fantastic user experience and all of the key cloud features that business customers need for their apps.” Kosten Metreweli – Chief Commercial Officer at OnApp

Cirrus Tech Ltd. has been a leader in providing affordable, dependable cloud hosting as well as website hosting services in Canada since 1999. They have hosted and supported hundreds of thousands of websites and applications for Canadian businesses and clients around the world. As a BBB member with an A+ rating, Cirrus Hosting is a top-notch Canadian web hosting company with professional support, rigorous reliability and easily upgradable VPS solutions that grow right alongside your business. Their Canadian data center is at 151 Front Street in Toronto.

A website needs to be up and running at all times for users to be able to access anytime of the day-from any city in the world. In today’s world we spend more time on the internet than having conversations with people in our lives. This means businesses need to be prepared for any unforeseeable downtimes and possible website slowdowns, which could be caused by variety of reasons, like, technical issues at a provider infrastructure, a rush of traffic due to breaking news, seasonal shopping trends, etc …

Now as more and more businesses are solely transforming their business practices online- they need to make sure that in this competitive market, their website user has the best possible user experience – for every second a user waits for a page to load on your website, a large number of them would give up and head back to google to search for probably your competitors site that would not leave them this disgruntled. As we all know, one of the most important aspects of internet users experience is the speed at which the content of the web pages load.

For most websites, a content distribution network: also known as CDN is one of the best ways to ensure that the integrity of the website is delivered without delay to users across the world. What CDN is in actuality, is a network of geographically dispersed high-capacity hosted servers which deliver cached content from websites to end users depending on the geographical locations of these end users in cases of downtimes or slowdowns. So that, even during a breakdown phase of the website-the users may still have access to the websites static content.

On set up, CDN utilizes cutting edge technology standards to distribute the content from your web hosts server to a network of geographically dispersed servers. Nevertheless, behind the CDN sits your hosting provider, serves content to multiple servers around the globe and very quickly upon updates. Once a visitor tries to view your site, an intelligence embedded in the nature of the technology, serves the visitor from closest provider. Also, in case any of the providers in this entire CDN network experience any technical difficulties, any of the other providers will start serving the content, without being notices or delayed!

Many e-commerce and media company vendors pay Cloud hosting companies like Cirrus tech (www.cirrushosting.com) to set up their CDN so as to deliver their content to their audience of end-users. Apart from better performance and its efficient availability, CDN helps to offload the traffic served directly from the main providers’ original infrastructure that could result in possible cost saving for the company. Cirrus hosting’s CDN (Content distribution network) is based on the innovative OnApp (www.Onapp.com/federation) cloud platform that helps to push copies of our customers site and media automatically. OnApp has a huge pool of virtual infrastructure that you can use to create services that are both global and diverse in nature or as local and individualistic as per the need. OnApp federated CDN has over 170 points of presence in 113 cities across 43 countries helping in distributing different sites’ content in these different locations.

There is a lot of discussion on security concerns of cloud technologies like CDN. With OnApp CDN, publishers have complete control over their content delivery policies, including the ability to protect against stream ripping and unauthorized access. You can feel safe in the knowledge that you will have complete control over where your content is sent and also only public facing content is distributed.

The four major reasons why CDN is vital:-

Continuity:- A down time of company’s website can cost the business millions of dollars. Whether if you are running a blog, shopping cart or even an online magazine, it is important to make sure your visitors can access your site at all times.

Speed:- Thousands or even millions of visitors rushing onto a website , even in its downtime has no impact due to this agile component of CDN. The user’s location and close proximity to the web server has a desirable impact on the websites load time. By dispersing content across multiple geographically located servers, one is able to load pages faster.

Improved SEO:- This is due to the physical locations of the multiple servers around the world and so the websites are being loaded from the closest servers making the loading time faster. Google and other search engines like yahoo and Bing give preference to local addresses increasing the Search engine optimization for that website.

Cost effective:– Content Delivery Network (CDN) is not all difficult to manage and apart from this, there is no costs entailed on setting up infrastructure. This frees up businesses to manage their business and even aspects of their website without any underlying concern of a website crash. CDN leaves your content and business practices secure- leaving them to focus on sales, engagement, conversion rates and revenue.

Contrary to what some people might have you believe, the cloud isn’t something that just anyone should dive into. Not every organization stands to benefit from cloud computing, nor can every business successfully adopt a cloud model. If you make the jump before your organization is ready to support it, you’re basically just hurling money into a pit – you’ll gain nothing, and lose a great deal of capital in the process. Suffice it to say, that isn’t a mistake you want to make.

So how can you tell if your business is among those that should implement the cloud? Read more →

You’d be surprised, or perhaps not, by the number of businesses whose revenue and relationship with customers are dependent on an old server sitting under a desk or in a closet, the maintenance and continued functioning of which depends on the IT expertise of someone who is not entirely qualified for the job.

It makes me cringe when I talk to small business owners about the state of their IT infrastructure and they tell me that mission critical applications and databases are running on creaky old servers that haven’t been replaced for years, often because there’s no one around who understands exactly what the server is doing and they are afraid to touch it in case they break something. Read more →